Cue up 1979 – by the Smashing Pumpkins – and take a look at what car shopping was like in 1979. It is surreal to watch this, given the reality we live in, today. It was just another commercial, back then. One of countless many that came on while you were watching Star Trek or Rockford Files re-runs. As a kid, I must have watched hundreds of them. I didn’t think much, if anything, about them – because they were just commercials and this was just normal background stuff, back in ’79.
Normalcy defined in this context as brand-new cars priced under $5,000. Not on the low-end. Not the “shitboxes,” as Brock Yates referred to cars such as the Chevy Chevette, the Ford Pinto and the various little Japanese cars that abounded back then. Five grand bought you a large sedan or personal luxury coupe, such as the Ford Thunderbird you see in this old commercial. How about a full-size station wagon? Three grand (or less) is what a shitbox cost. The Pinto? Two grand, when it first came out. Only a little more than the cost of set of new tires for the ’22 “rims” on a 2026 model year SUV.
Gnomesayin’?
This commercial brought back memories of something else. Of just a few years later, when I became old enough to (legally) drive. More specifically, I remember that us ’80s teenagers could afford to drive.
Consider the downstream effect of brand-new cars priced under $5,000 in ’79. By the early ’80s, these cars were used cars and they were available for half what they cost new or even less. The cars made a few years prior to ’79 – that were new in the late ’60s or early ’70s – could be bought for a few hundred bucks. I know this because I bought some for that that and so did most of my high school friends. One specific memory I’ve got is of heading out with a friend of mine to meet some dude who had an early ’70s Challenger for sale. The car was a beater, with rust and a loose-ringed engine (nothing some Motor Honey wouldn’t fix for awhile) but it was hist first car, bought with after-school fast-food job money saved up for the previous couple of years. Almost no one thought a car like that was “collectible” then. It was just an old beater. Another friend had a memorable Datsun B210 with no (working) reverse. When it was time to back up, we opened the doors and pushed it back, Fred Flintstone-style.
The rich kids had IROC-Zs. But the rest of us had our wheels, too.
The point I am trying to make is that because new cars were once affordable, used cars were much more so. This assured practically anyone who wanted a car could afford one. Including teenagers working part-time fast-food jobs. I think the minimum McWage was $3.35 when I worked at McDonald’s back in the early ’80s, after school and on weekends. I remember getting excited about a ten cent-per hour raise. I also remember being able to fill the gas tank of my ratty old ’70s Camaro for $20 in the mid ’80sand being able to drive it around – just cruising, something we did back then – every Friday night and other nights, too. Here it is 40 years down the road and I can only afford to drive my ’76 Trans-Am (which I have owned since the early ’90s) every now and then, because it takes more than $100 to fill the same-size tank up now vs. back then.
Cue the Lee Greenwood song.
“Inflation” does not account for all of this. The purchasing power of the dollar is certainly less than it was. The other side of the coin is that lots of us – probably most of us – are being paid less dollars, too. Usually for longer hours and more work. I didn’t work seven days a week back in the ’90s or even the early-mid 2000s. Now I do – and I make less than I did.
I realize I am lucky in that at least I and others who can remember ’79 had some good times for awhile. I was able to buy the Trans-Am I still have back in the ’90s when I was in my 20s and it was still just a old car. I had no idea it would become a “collector” car. It was just the kind of car I liked and that’s why I bought it and – the thing that mattered most – I could afford it, because even when it was new it was affordable. I still have the original window sticker for it, which came with the car when I bought it (I am the second owner). Back in ’76, when it was new, it sold for $5,400 – so a bit more than the ’79 models you see in the video, but keep in mind that back in ’76, a brand-new Trans-Am was almost in the same price class as a new Corvette and my particular car was loaded (AC, still considered a luxury option back then, plus power windows, locks, the upgraded “custom” interior, electric rear defrost, etc.). And yet, it was common for high school-aged kids to be driving such cars by the mid-late 1980s because by that time, they cost less than half what they sold for new and it wasn’t an impossibility for a high-school-aged kid to come up with the $2,500 or so it cost to buy a used one.
Today, “inflation” has caused the asking price of a car like my TA – used – to increase by a factor of six or more from its brand-new MSRP – along with the gas on top of that. Cue up the Pumpkins.
It was nice while it lasted.
. . .
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